Many agricultural crops are planted and harvested in parallel rows. Because of this regular pattern, a machine can make consecutive passes to accomplish planting, harvesting and other tasks. When making measurements and estimates for a field, for example acreage or yield, an important parameter for these calculations is implement working width. The implement working width is the width of the area worked (tilled, planted, harvested, etc.) by the implement on a single pass through the field. The implement working width may be different from the implement physical width, which is the actual physical width of the entire implement. For example, if a planter has marker arms, the physical width would likely be larger than the working width of the implement.
Many work machines have on-board computers with application programs that use various parameters to monitor machine usage and productivity. Implement width is one example of a parameter that can be used by one or more such application programs. In an agricultural application program when using an implement in a field, it is not uncommon for the implement working width to not be setup properly, or to not be setup at all. Some automatic methods for determining implement working width may not be effective because one or more initial parameters used to calculate implement working width are not set up properly. For example, where plant rows are automatically sensed a Global Positioning System (GPS) line may not be created or updated. When this occurs, an application program may not drive the operator to verify the working width of the implement. Without this information being setup properly; the yield, working acres, and many other measures that an application program can provide will be incorrect. Some of this data can be corrected by post-processing with manual inputs, while other data simply may be inaccurate.
It would be desirable to have a routine that detects and verifies implement working width information and takes a predetermined action depending on the differences between the detected or calculated implement working width information and any previously stored implement working width information.